Glorious Ones by Francine Prose

Author:Francine Prose [Prose, Francine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780689105999
Publisher: Atheneum
Published: 1974-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

VI Columbina

“SHE’S NOT CRAZY,” I SAID to myself, the first time I saw Isabella Andreini. “She’s driving all the others crazy. They’re the ones who are crazy!”

God, what a sight: five full-grown men, dancing around her in a frenzy, like chickens with their heads cut off. That’s what they looked like to me: decapitated chicken carcasses, twitching in the death throes.

Ugh. I couldn’t stand it. So I looked at Isabella instead. And, as I watched her, standing there, squawking like a duck, I saw something in her eyes. It was a certain look, which only another woman could know. And it was not the look of a crazy person.

“Nice work,” I thought, “for such a young girl. She’s crazy, like a fox is crazy.”

A moment later, something else crossed my mind, but I caught myself. “Columbina,” I muttered, “you may be clever, but your heart’s as stupid as always.”

Because my second thought had been for Flaminio.

So I liked Isabella from the very first day. But it was a long time before I got to know her. It wasn’t until she’d stopped doing that spooky moon girl routine, until she’d started acting like a normal person. It wasn’t until she’d changed her stage part from that of the Moon Woman to that of Isabella, the smart little virgin, out of her mind with love.

Frankly, I envied her those changes. I played the same part I’d always played—Columbina, the shrewd servant, the gossip, the expert on sex, the know-it-all. After twenty years of it, I was bored to death, I was ready to quit.

But after awhile, I stopped envying Isabella, and began to feel a little grateful. For she made my Columbina a whole different role.

Playing opposite Vittoria, I’d always sunk straight to my lowest level. On stage with her, I repeated the same stale, stupid jokes I’d traded with the whores at Parma. I became one of those women again, squatting in the street, gossiping, arching huge gobs of spit into the gutter.

Yet with Isabella, it was different. At the age of fifty-five I was light on my feet again, like a dancer. Our scenes together were magical. I waltzed across the stage, counseling Isabella, bantering with her, slandering the ugly old suitors, devising brilliant schemes for her secret meetings with Francesco. The ways I found to insult the Captain, Pantalone, and the Doctor were inspired, positively inspired. I’d never been in better form, not since my salad days in Parma, when I was courted by all those handsome boys who loved me for my wit.

So I thought Isabella and I would be friends, right away. But it wasn’t so simple.

Now, knowing Isabella so well, it seems incredible to me, our first real conversation.

It was late, after a performance. Though we’d been playing together for months, we’d never talked about anything except the scenes, the action, the dialogue. But on that night, when I went to her tent to return a pair of bootlaces, I found her sitting there alone, scribbling in a little book.

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